
"In the spring of 1996, lawmakers quietly buried a rider in a humdrum bill meant to make life easier for small businesses. That addition, the Congressional Review Act, granted Congress the power to kill new federal regulations with a simple majority vote. Thirty years later, Republican lawmakers are wielding it to quietly upend how the country manages public lands. One of the act's sponsors was Ted Stevens, an irascible Republican from Alaska."
"The Congressional Review Act allows Congress to overturn rules finalized in the previous 60 legislative days with a simple majority. This prevents federal agencies from ever creating similar regulations. In its first two decades, the oversight law was used just once. But when Donald Trump took office in 2017, a Republican-led Congress swiftly used the CRA to repeal 16 Obama-era regulations, ranging from environmental protections to labor and financial rules. (Congress also used it three times during President Biden's first term.)"
The Congressional Review Act, added in 1996, gives Congress the power to overturn federal rules finalized within the previous 60 legislative days by simple majority, and bars agencies from issuing similar regulations afterward. The measure lay largely unused until 2017, when a Republican-led Congress employed it to repeal 16 Obama-era rules across environmental, labor, and financial policy. Historical ties between lawmakers and extractive industries helped shape the law's origins. In recent years Republicans have increasingly used the CRA to target land-use and environmental protections, altering how public lands are managed.
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